Beer of Tomorrow

Monthly: January 2016

Does beer have terroir? Can brewers imbue their beer with a distinctive sense of place? Traditional wisdom says that outside of spontaneous fermentation or barrel-aging, beer is too much of an industrial product to carry any markers from its agricultural roots. Of course, conventional wisdom is often misguided or outright wrong, and a few brewers in LA’s concrete jungle are working hard to give their beers a strong connection to the land. And they are coming up with some really unique (and delicious) beers in the process.

There are apparently some craft beer geeks on the writing staff of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, as the old craft vs crafty debate crossed into the mainstream on Tuesday, January 5th when Colbert used Blue Moon’s dubious claim of being craft beer as the punchline to a joke about the militants currently unlawfully occupying a Federal nature preserve in Oregon.

After setting up the kerfuffle in Oregon and showing footage of the camo-clad and hirsute occupying force, Colbert quipped:

“I have not seen this many angry bearded men in Oregon since I referred to Blue Moon as a craft beer”

Hard to believe that it is already time to award another Beer of Tomorrow Beer of the Year honor, and with so many new brews being released in 2015 it was a challenge to winnow down the pool of IPAs, sour ales, and inventive hybrid styles. Wherein previous years the award has gone to new beers that we’ve fallen hard for and consumed as often as possible (Firestone Walker’s Pivo Pils in 2014 and Monkish Brewing’s Selah in 2015), this year we were so taken by Highland Park Brewery’s Raised Eyebrows fruited wild ale that it gets the nod even though we’ve only enjoyed the brew on a handful of occasions. Read more →